Jonathan Scanlon

January 15, 2005

In today’s gospel passage we heard Mark’s account of the calling of the first

disciples. Jesus’ first disciples are fishermen from Capernaum. In Mark’s account this is

the disciples’ very first encounter with Jesus, the first time they ever laid their eyes on

Him. The story can be simplified by saying that Jesus called and they followed. These

fishermen dropped their nets, right in the middle of their work, and left. We are not told if

they liked their work or not…

(My cell phone rings.)

AGHHH!!!

How embarrassing,

Excuse me just a second…

Yes???…

Hold on, I’m in the middle of something I’ll…

Who is this?

Where are you going?

And I am supposed to following you where?….

Yeah Right, I’ll think about, call me back later…

Sorry about that, now where was I? So Jesus saw Simon and Andrew casting a net in to

the sea and Jesus called…

…Wait a minuet, He must have my cell phone number!

Jesus interrupts our lives in unexpected times.

Just as the disciples take great risk in their decision to follow Jesus’ call to

ministry, answering such a call for what God had planned for our lives is also very risky.

We demonstrate the strength of our faith through the risks we take in our lives on behalf

of our faith. The great theologian and philosopher Soren Kirkeguaard once wrote,

“Without risk a faith is nothing.” I have even heard people say that they spell the word

‘faith,’ R-I-S-K.

Here in Mark, Jesus calls two pairs of brothers, both Peter and Andrew and James

and John. These men drop both their work and their family obligation to follow Jesus’

summons. It seems pretty clear that James and John were not bad fishermen. They must

have had something going for them because they had their own boat and hired staff

helping them. Not only did they leave their business, they chose to leave their family.

The disciples’ dropping all they had and leaving their families to follow Jesus,

whom they just met, should not be taken lightly. In a traditional society, a break from

one’s family and his or her occupation was more rare than it is today. They were not only

risking their business, they were risking the welfare of their whole family.

A call to discipleship is a huge and extraordinary disruption in one’s life. There is

not much more one can risk in a lifetime. Through answering God’s call to discipleship,

we are dealing with a choice which effects one’s entire family. Discipleship always has a

cost. By becoming Christ’s disciples, we must be willing to give up something to follow

and serve. Simon, who was called Peter, put an extra burden on his family through his

answering the call to become a disciple. Peter’s home in Capernaum becomes a base out

of which Jesus and His followers operated.

This story illustrates how God can see possibilities in us that we could not even

fathom. Jesus can see in us what we cannot always see in ourselves. Jesus had such great

eyes that He saw in Simon and Andrew what no one else saw, all their possibilities,

potential, and ability to spread God’s message to the world. Their experiences and

abilities as fishermen would be used by the Lord to become ‘fishers of men.’ God has

given them a new goal for their old abilities and new employment for old skills. Nothing

was wasted in their lives.

A part of the work of accepting a new call is leaving behind what we have and

what we once were. Leaving has always been the hallmark of evangelism and mission.

We leave behind lives, centered on ourselves and our own comfort and enjoyment, and

embrace a life that is based solely on service to God in the world. People become

‘displaced persons’ when they are ‘placed’ in God’s work. Not only places and people,

but things and dreams of things are left behind. As a pastor I’ll probably never drive a

B.M.W. or live in a house on the golf course of a country club.

With this understanding of what a call to discipleship means, let’s examine the

Psalm that Audrey read to us this morning. Psalm 62 can be summarized as a statement

of faith and trust in God. It says, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart

before him; God is a refuge for us.” Everything we are and have depends on God. But the

psalmist continues by saying, “if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” Why?

Because all, “power belongs to God.”

This passage in the Bible is a clear call for us to escape from soul-withering

materialism of our society and to trust in God at all times. Discipleship and faith is a

question of our true identity. Who are we really? Where and on what do we set our heart?

Where is our loyalty? In whom do we really trust?

The call to discipleship was not only given to Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the

rest of the twelve. The call to discipleship extends to us. Jesus calls us to trust and follow.

We are called to follow God; not our resources, not our buying power, not what we can

get our hands on, but instead to trust and follow the Word of God. Through faith in that

Word, we may find true peace. The greatest hindrance in finding peace in the new world

is wealth. The problem with wealth is not the money itself, but instead the fact that

having money makes us think that we have power, or are autonomous from others and

from God. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Money makes us feel like we have

power and control of our lives, but while it can give us status and power in our society, it

only provides an illusion of control. When a hurricane wipes out all our possessions,

when we contract cancer, when we loose our employment, or when we loose loved ones

in our lives we find that we are not ultimately in control. What power and status we

receive through money only gives us the ability to do more good in the world. From

reading this Psalm, we find that true peace is actually found in trust and prayer, both are a

part of Christian discipleship.

On this weekend set aside to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I

have been asked to include him in this interpretation of scripture. Dr. King was a brilliant

man for whom our country is deeply indebted. A part of faithful discipleship is to seek

justice in the world. Martin Luther King knew of the power of nonviolence as a tool for

seeking that justice. I look forward to the Lenten study series we are going to have here at

St. Mark’s on nonviolence this year. I’m sure Martin Luther King will be discussed as we

talk about Walter Wink’s work during Lent.

One thing that I have learned during my time here at St. Mark’s is that a group of

faithful disciples seeking to do justice together in the world cannot be a single-issue

church. Our mission is to work for justice in many different areas. Martin Luther King

understood this. He knew that you could not bring justice to the oppression of people of

color without addressing poverty and working for peace in the world. In the same way,

St. Mark’s cannot seek justice merely on the border without helping the homeless and

dealing with systems of poverty here in Tucson. And we would not be seeking justice

without sending assistance to those surviving the hurricanes and other disasters which

occurred last year. And while I know there are people in this sanctuary with entirely

different views on the issue, we would not be seeking justice in the world without

addressing the issues of the church and homosexuality. Regardless of your position on all

of these issues, we must seek resolution and justice as a church.

Dr. King understood this call to discipleship and social justice. If he were alive

today he might discuss how we still have not completely achieved his vision and dream

for the future. He might discuss racial profiling and other areas of our culture where we

still divide people by race. Dr. King might discuss globalization and it’s effects on our

border and show his support for the work of No More Deaths and other humanitarian

agencies we have working in the desert. But I know that if he were with us today, Dr.

King would summarize all the work we need to do in demonstrating our faith as disciples

of Christ, as to how we treat our poor and work for peace in the world.

I would like to read an excerpt from a speech Dr. King gave the year before he

died. The speech is entitled a ‘Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam.’

In this work, King calls for a revolution of our values. If we listen carefully to these

words, we might even gain some insight for our world today…

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world

revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When

machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more

important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism

are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and

justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than

flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see

that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of

values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With

righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of

the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only

to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries,

and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of

Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that

it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true

revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say to war: “This way

of settling differences is not just.” A nation that continues year after year to spend

more money on military defense that on programs of social uplift is approaching

spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead

the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish,

to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take

precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a

recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it to a brotherhood.

All it took for Jesus to convince the first disciples was to simply say, ‘follow me.’ That

phrase in Greek, deu/te ovpi,sw mou,, literally means ‘come all of you after me.’

In this story, Jesus acts as a fisherman of people by catching these disciples like fish.

Jesus is also catching us today. Come all of you after me. The purpose of Mark’s gospel

is to turn it’s readers into faithful disciples. To create new people of faith who are willing

to risk themselves and their lives for the message of the gospel and to stand up for what is

right and just in the world, through the eyes of God. The fundamental quality of Christian

disciples are those people who answer Christ’s call “follow me.”

The call to Christian discipleship questions our ultimate loyalty. Do we trust in

God. Are we willing to drop what we have going in our current lives to be truly faithful.

How will our values change as a result of our call? How will we respond when Jesus

approaches us and says, “follow me?”

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.