January 25, 2015 Sermons from The Church of the Covenant Follow The Reverend Amy Starr Redwine The Church of the Covenant Presbyterian Church (USA) 11205 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44106 CovenantWeb.org
Mark 1:14-20 14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." 16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.
Follow Mark 1:14-20 Have you made your world smaller than the one God has made for you? In the 1970s, a man named Roger Hart, an environmental psychologist, decided to study human children the way Jane Goodall studied primates. He went to a small town in Vermont and tracked 86 children between the ages of 3 and 12 who lived there. For two and a half years he followed them around, documenting the places they went by themselves. Hart told the kids to show him the places that were scary, that were dangerous, and because of that, the places they could not resist going. Hart took this information and made maps that measured the distance each child was allowed to go from his or her house. What he discovered was that these kids had incredible freedom. Even the smallest ones moved unsupervised through their neighborhoods. By the age of 10, most kids had run of the town, which included a lake. Their world was big, expansive, and yes, often scary. But they explored, took risks, and made good use of the freedom their parents gave them. Nearly forty years later, Roger Hart returned to that Vermont town and once again tracked the children, many of whom were the children of those he had studied in the 70s. What he discovered is that, in forty years, the circle of freedom had drastically shrunk. When this new generation of kids played alone, they didn t go out in the neighborhood or into the woods or to the lake at the edge of the town they stuck to the boundaries of their parents property. Little has changed in this town in forty years. There is no more crime now than there was then and it hasn t changed much physically or geographically. But from Hart s interviews it was clear: in this small town, the children s world has gotten smaller. 1 Have you made your world smaller than the one God has made for you? In first-century Palestine, people s worlds were small. But when Jesus walked by the sea of Galilee and said to some fishermen there, follow me, Andrew and Simon, James and John said yes. And these were men whose worlds were small. Their lives were predictable. They were born and raised in the same small town. They learned the family business fishing the sea of Galilee and kept that business going day 1 Fearless, Invisibilia podcast, January 16, 2014. http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/377515477/fearless?showdate=2015-01-16
to day. They mended nets, cleaned boats, brought in fish. Compared to modern life, their world view was limited, with limited experiences and limited travel. But when this man they d never met before came to their town and preached a onesentence sermon about the kingdom of God coming near, when this same man walked by the sea and called to them in the boat Follow me and I will make you fish for people. they dropped their nets, came to shore, and followed him. And just like that (snap), God made their world exponentially bigger. When Karoline was pregnant with her first child, she did what most parents-to-be do: she imagined what it would be like to be a mother and thought about all the ways this baby would change her life. She made plans for the baby s nursery, signed up for a childbirth class and started reading books about pregnancy. But the nursery wasn t done, the classes hadn t started and she hadn t yet gotten to the childbirth chapter in her books when, two and a half months before the baby was due, she went into labor. Twelve hours later, she gave birth to a 3-pound baby boy. From woman to mother in twelve hours, she writes. No amount of [medication], no going back over my What to Expect When You re Expecting notes, no review of the nursery design was going to postpone this baby. That s immediately. 2 We all have such stories of personal epiphanies moments when something happened that changed everything. Maybe it was falling in love when love was the last thing we were looking for. Maybe it was a diagnosis ours or someone s we love that reoriented everything. Maybe it was an accident, an unexpected pregnancy, a sudden death. We have collective stories of epiphanies too, stories that define us as a nation: events like Pearl Harbor and 911. Some moments are so big, so shocking, so surprising and unexpected that they do indeed change everything. If the Bible teaches us anything, it s that this is often how God breaks into human lives. Think of all the stories when God shows up unexpectedly, with no warning: to tell Abraham to leave everything behind and journey to a new land and become the father of a great nation. To Jacob in the guise of an angel who wrestled with him all night and left him with a permanent limp and a new name. To Mary to announce that she was going to give birth to God in human flesh. To Paul on the road to Damascus. These epiphany stories make it easy for us to assume that it was like that for the first disciples too. 2 Karoline Lewis, The Immediately of Epiphany. Dear Working Preacher, www.workingpreacher.org, January 18, 2015.
But sometimes God s breaking into our lives is not nearly so dramatic. According to today's text, Jesus said exactly ten words: Follow me and I will make you fish for people. And Andrew and Simon, James and John said yes. What if Jesus was simply walking through that lakeside town saying to every person he saw: Follow me and I will put your gifts to work for God s kingdom. Follow me and I will make you fish for people. Follow me and I will make you heal people. Follow me and I will make you clothe people. Follow me and I will make you feed people. Follow me. Follow me. Can t you see Jesus, walking along, trying to catch the eyes of people in his path so that he could say: Follow me! Come follow me! Don't make your world smaller than the one God has made for you! Let me show you just how big your world can be. It is tempting to focus on the fact that the first disciples made a drastic change - they did after all leave their jobs and their families. We focus on that because we think it lets us off the hook after all, we couldn t possibly do that. But in a bigger sense, they simply expanded their work and their circle of relationships. I m going to use all your fisherman skills, Jesus might have said as they began to walk with him. You ll need all your patience, all your insight, all of the gifts you have been honing, because your world is about to get a whole lot bigger. God does not yank us from our old lives and drop us into a new one, like Harry Potter discovering he s a wizard and suddenly entering a world of witchcraft and wizardry he never knew existed. The way God makes our world bigger is to use us where we already are. And the way we follow Jesus right where we are is to pay attention, to open our minds and hearts to how we can share God s love and mercy with those around us in the smallest ways. Everyday things. Do we smile at the person who fixes our coffee? Do we speak to those walking down the same hallway as us? Do we look up from our devices long enough to make eye contact with other human beings? Are we as kind to those we live with as to those we are trying to impress? Are we willing to forgive and extend grace, even to those with whom we fundamentally disagree? Atul Gawande is a Harvard-trained surgeon who has written several books. Not long ago, while researching the topic of how medical innovations spread, he discovered something unexpected: when a new treatment or technique is discovered, the most effective and efficient way to change the norms and practices of the medical profession is people talking to people. Gawande tells of the discovery of
one of the most important medical innovations of the twentieth century: an incredibly effective treatment for cholera that consists of an easy to prepare solution of water, sugar, and salt. If this oral rehydration solution is given early and often to a cholera victim, the chances that they will survive increase exponentially. It was a ridiculously easy fix for a terrifying and deadly illness. But at first this cure did not catch on. There were good reason for this: it was counterintuitive to ask people suffering from cholera to drink something and the ratios of sugar and salt and water needed to be fairly exact for the solution to work. So at first the miracle cure, which was discovered in the late 1960s, wasn t widely adopted. Then, more than a decade after this treatment was discovered, a non-profit in Bangledesh set the goal of getting it adopted nationwide by a mostly illiterate population. They decided to do it by a method usually dismissed as impractical and inefficient: by going door to door, person to person, and talking. The logistics of the project were daunting, and at first there were some hiccups. But eventually, a group of semi-literate workers taught twelve million people in seventyfive thousand villages about oral rehydration therapy why it was so effective, how to make the solution, how to administer it so that it worked. And eventually, knowledge of the treatment spread and became self-propagating. Child deaths from cholera and similar diseases plunged more than eighty per cent from 1980 to 2005. All because people with something to share talked to people who needed to hear it. 3 Jesus calls us to follow because we have something to share. In his poem That Sweet Moon Language, the poet Hafez writes: Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, Love me. Of course you do not do this out loud; Otherwise, Someone would call the cops. Still though, think about this, This great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one 3 Atul Gawande, Slow Ideas. The New Yorker, July 29, 2013.
Who lives with a full moon in each eye That is always saying With that sweet moon Language What every other eye in this world Is dying to Hear. 4 It turns out that the way God makes our world bigger is really not so complicated. Most of the time, following Jesus is about connecting to the people around us, reaching out in love, being willing to make eye contact and offer a kind word to a stranger or even harder sometimes a forgiving word to those we know best. Have you made your world smaller than the one God has made for you? In every interaction, with every person you encounter, you are Christ s disciple, capable of sharing God s love and acceptance, forgiveness and grace. Jesus is always calling us to follow him. May we find the courage to say yes. 4 quoted in Boyle, Gregory, Tattoos on the Heart (p. 18). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
11205 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44106 CovenantWeb.org Convinced of God's grace, the Church of the Covenant strives to be a caring and compassionate congregation, welcoming all people regardless of age, race, national origin, marital status, gender, affectional orientation, and mental or physical ability.