"A Bigger Boat"

"A Bigger Boat"

Isaiah 9:1-4

Matthew 4:12-23

Sermon preached at Benson Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, January 26, 2014

I love to go fishing.   My father started teaching me to fish when I was four years old.   I practiced casting in the living room of our house on Florence Blvd. and the first time we went for trout that summer in Colorado, I caught five.  I ran up to a man walking by the shore of the lake and proudly exclaimed, “I caught five fish!”  The man replied, “Well, you need to stop, honey, that’s your limit and I’m the game warden!” 

None of my three brothers liked to fish and eventually drifted away from it, but I didn't.  Pop and I still fished together until just before I went  away to seminary. I still have Pop’s fishing gear and it has been too long since I got a line wet, but some of the happiest days of my life have been spent with Pop pulling trout from a clear Colorado lake or stream.   I like to fish, but I wonder how much I would like it if I had to do it all the time, if I had to do it for a living.   I can still cast pretty well,   but I am strictly an amateur when it comes to fishing.

In today’s story from Matthew, we encounter some professional fisherman.  Simon, called Peter and Andrew are brothers, they are casting nets in the Sea of Galilee.  This is an interesting detail about Peter and Andrew, they couldn't afford a boat.   They would wade out into the water and cast their nets and haul in whatever they could.   It was very labor intensive, very hard work.

So there they are, casting their nets into the sea and this total stranger comes along, “Follow me,” the stranger says “and I will make you fish for people.” There must have been something very compelling about this guy because immediately they left their nets and followed him. Just like that. 

This guy Jesus continued along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. Now James and John were one step up economically from Peter and Andrew.  They had a boat and they worked with their father.  

Unlike Peter and Andrew, who could only fish as deep as they could wade, James and John and their father Zebedee could take their boat out and cast their net in the deep waters.  Still hard work, but they were able to catch more fish and make more money.  Once again, he called them. And once again, immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. 

Once again, something was very compelling about this stranger.   Peter and Andrew basically were just leaving a subsistence career with no bigger investment than a couple of nets.  But James and John were leaving a boat and their father, Zebedee for this guy who just came out of nowhere.   Matthew does not record Zebedee’s reaction to this. 

So these four professional fishermen became the amateurs and rookies. "Catching people," that’s how Jesus described their new vocation. They had no training for this new line of work.

Yet it is such people that are chosen by God to spread the Good News.   People like Isaiah, minding his own business that day in the temple, not looking for a vision, but finding one.   People like Paul, out to persecute Christians, but becoming the most persuasive Christian of all. People like Peter and James and John, one day catching fish, the next day, netting people.  People like you and like me.  We are called to spread our nets in the broad daylight and bring in the catch of the hurting and lost.  We are called to bring people on board the boat.

One of the greatest movie lines of all times comes from the classic, “Jaws.”  When the three main characters are hunting the killer shark on a small boat, Sheriff Brody played by the great Roy Schneider sees the shark for the first time and we the audience see the shark for the first time.   Sheriff Brody, the amateur goes to the two shark experts and says, the great line, “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”   The shark is actually bigger than the boat that is being used to hunt the shark.  That line has passed into cultural history, for any problem that seems too big, someone, at some time has said “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”

Jesus called James and John, Peter and Andrew to leave fishing for fish behind, and to fish for people.  James and John left their father’s fishing boat for a bigger boat, to become a bigger boat, a boat that catches people.  These professional fishermen stop mending nets and become the nets, nets and boats that catch people.  

And still it continues to this day.  Our job still is to go out and start catching people.   Our job is to be the bigger, most welcoming boat.  Not to be the biggest congregation, but the most inclusive, the most loving.  Our job is to cast the net of God’s love and draw people in.

A fisherman walked past a game warden with a line of fish over his back.  The game warden said, "Great looking fish.  Where'd you get them?"  The fisherman said, "Come with me, and I'll show you."  He took the game warden out in his boat, took out a stick of dynamite, lit it, and threw it in the water.  After a big shuddering blast, hundreds of fish came to the surface.  The game warden said, "That's the most illegal way I ever saw of catching fish, and you're coming in with me."  The fisherman took out another stick of dynamite, lit it, handed it to the game warden, and said, "Ya gonna talk or ya gonna fish?"

That’s the question we have to answer every day.  "Ya gonna talk or ya gonna fish?" 

Amen.  

"Jesus is Baptized"

Sermon preached at Benson Presbyterian Church,

January 12, 2014, Baptism of the Lord.

Isaiah 42:1-9

Matthew 3:13-17

I wonder how many of you here actually remember your own baptism?  I don’t remember my own baptism.   My family is very fond of telling me how the sound of me sucking on my pacifier could be heard in the back of the church, but in the words of Winston Churchill speaking of the circumstances of his birth, “While I was present for the occasion, I have no memory of it.”

As a pastor, most of the baptisms that I have performed have been of infants, who of course, while they were present, have no memory of the occasion.  I have baptized some adults and older children, but not anywhere near as many babies and toddlers.

My mother was raised as a Baptist, so she was baptized by immersion when she was about 12 years old.   She claimed that she had a reputation as a bit of a trouble maker (imagine that!) and that she believed that the preacher held her underneath the water just a little bit longer than he needed to.   She also claimed that’s why she never learned to swim.

The most famous baptism of this past year would have to be that of Prince George, Queen Elizabeth II’s great-grandson and future King of England.  As is the tradition in the royal family, George was baptized with water from the River Jordan.  A seminary buddy of mine observed on Facebook that she has seen the River Jordan and that she hoped they boiled that water before they used it to baptized the baby!

The reason that Jordan River water is used for royal baptism is because of the story we heard from Matthew’s gospel today.  It is the story of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in that very same River Jordan. 

The River Jordan was and is a significant source of water in the region.  Like so many things in the Middle East, there is conflict between Israel, Jordan and Syria about the use and pollution of Jordan River waters. 

Friends of the Earth has named the River Jordan as one of the world’s 100 most endangered ecological sites because of pollution and over use.

In the Hebrew Bible, the people of Israel completed the Exodus from Egypt by crossing the Jordan.   The waters of the river were parted by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant into the river and the people crossed the river on dry land.  The prophets Elijah and Elisha also both made miraculous crossings of the river, parting the waters and walking on dry land.

So the Jordan was important theologically and historically, but it was also important as a source of water for everyday use and agricultural purposes.   It was both historical and mundane like so many things that surround us.  

It was into the Jordan River valley that John the Baptist came, preaching baptism for the repentance of sins.   John came straight out of the wilderness and he was a character to put it mildly.  Matthew tells us that his garment was camel hair and it was not the dignified camel hair coat I remember my dad having.   It was a dead camel’s skin, probably one that John found in the wilderness.  It probably didn’t’ smell too good.  John ate locusts, that’s right, bugs and wild honey.   

But this strange looking man had a message that appealed far and wide, people from Jerusalem and all of Judea came to hear John preach and to be baptized by him.

And amid the people who came to be baptized was Jesus.  John balked when he saw Jesus come to him, because John recognized Jesus for who he really was.  

“I should come to you for baptism!” John exclaims.   But Jesus says, “Let it be so now, for it is proper to fill all righteousness.” So John consents and baptizes Jesus.  

And when Jesus is baptized, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and came down on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

What does all that mean?

A long time ago I learned that the reason that as Protestants our two sacraments are baptism and communion because they are both something that Jesus did and told his disciples to do.  Jesus doesn't baptize anyone in the Gospels, but he tells his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to go into all the world, to tell the Good News and make new disciples and to baptize them.  That’s why we baptize infants and new believers, because Jesus said to.  It’s how we welcome new believers to the family.

And baptism is something we share with Jesus.   It’s something we have in common with Jesus.  Jesus said, it was proper for him to be baptized by John.   Jesus is baptized by John because he is sharing in what we will experience.  When we are baptized, we share an experience with Jesus, right down to God claiming us as a beloved child with whom God is well pleased.  In fact, that is the point of every baptism, whether it is with the waters of the Jordan in a royal palace or in a Presbyterian church with plain old Omaha tap water from the Missouri.  God has claimed us no less than God has claimed Jesus.   Baptism is the sign and seal of the claim.

Jesus’ true identity is revealed at the moment of baptism, his identity as God’s child.  Our true identity is celebrated at the moment of baptism, our true identity as God’s child.

And that’s the trick, isn't it?  We have to remember, remember every day, that we are God’s beloved child.   We need to remind ourselves every day, that God is pleased in who God created in us.  We have to live our lives every day to claim our true identity, God’s beloved child.  We don’t see a dove descending every day, but we can choose, every day, to celebrate that identity, to live as God’s child, laying aside the hate and sin and scorn and to remember that everyone we meet is also God’s good creation and to help them to find their true identity, too.

Amen.

Christmas 2

January 5, 2014, Benson Presbyterian Church

Jeremiah 31:7-14

John 1:1-18

On December 23, I happened to see a piece by Rachel Maddow about the year 1968.   For those of you not old enough to remember, 1968 was a year of great upheaval and tragedy.  It was the year of the assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Senator Robert Kennedy.  It was a year of riots and protests and war and violence, not only in our country, but in many countries around the world.  But, as Maddow pointed out, the year 1968 ended with an amazing experience that the whole world shared.   

On Christmas Eve of 1968, in preparation for an eventual landing on the moon the next year, the Apollo 8 mission circled the moon.  It was the first time that human beings looked back on earth, from the point of view of a different world.   And instead of any other message that the Apollo 8 astronauts could have sent back from their orbit of the moon, looking back on the moon, this is the message they read to the whole of the human race, listening on radio or watching on television.  “We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.'"

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

"'And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.'

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

When the Apollo 8 astronauts returned to earth and their film was developed, all of us on earth, saw the good earth that they saw from lunar orbit.  A particular color photo, called “Earthrise” of this beautiful world, blue and wonderful and fragile, showed all of us for the first time where we really lived.   And the message of the astronauts was clear, in a new way, the message of the first chapter of Genesis was clear, this good earth, this beautiful and fragile and powerful place is the gift of a Good Creator, given into our hands, to cherish or to destroy.

This passage we heard this morning from John’s Gospel, called the prologue by Biblical scholars, goes back, way back beyond Bethlehem, beyond Nazareth to the dawn of creation, to the beginning of all things.

In the beginning, John quotes from Genesis, but then he hits a variation, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  John pulls back the curtain and shows us the whole sweep of salvation’s history from creation to the arrival of Jesus in the world.   John shows us God’s gift of salvation, given as a human being, fragile and powerful and precious.  God’s gift of salvation is given into our hands, to cherish or to destroy.

John’s Gospel is not a chronological life of Jesus.  John’s portrayal of Jesus is rich with symbolism and theological discourse and this passage we heard this morning is a prime example of that.  In this short passage, we see the entirety of John’s story of Jesus.

I think one of the things that many Christians find so frustrating about the stories of Jesus is the dearth of information about his early life.  In our twentieth first century context, we want to know how someone is shaped by their upbringing.  “The child is father to the man,” wrote William Wordsworth.  

Yes we have those very charming and very different stories about his birth from Matthew and Luke.  And there is that one incident from Luke about Jesus when he was twelve and was separated from Mary and Joseph in Jerusalem, but really, we don’t know what kind of little boy he was from the Bible, at least.

There are childhood accounts in the Gospel of Peter, one of the later Gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible and frankly, the little boy in those accounts sounds like someone who needs a time out, if not a swat on the bottom.  You can see why this book never made it into the Bible with this bratty Jesus.

Anne Rice, who is best known for her books about vampires, wrote a very interesting novel about the childhood of Jesus, “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt”.  While Rice approaches this book from ideas about Biblical scholarship that I find faulty and while she includes a lot of Catholic traditional teaching that has no basis in the Bible in her novel, the basic idea of the book is one that I find fascinating.  What did Jesus know and when did he know it?

In Rice’s book, Mary and Joseph know about Jesus special nature and destiny, but they try to raise their son as a normal little boy.  For the most part they succeed, but the child Jesus, like any child, is curious about who he is.  He realizes that Joseph is not his father, but he can’t quite figure out what the big secret is about him.

Finally Rice’s Jesus comes to a stunning realization about himself and the nature of the world.  Everything that is born must die.  He realizes that he was specifically born to die, that his special destiny is to lay down his life.

Looking at Jesus’ early life is not even a question for the author of John’s Gospel.  It was not a part of his big picture.  But, he would have agreed with Anne Rice’s conclusion; that Jesus was born to die.

During the Advent and Christmas seasons many churches hold a Service of Lessons and Carols, which has its origins in Cambridge University in England.  In 1918, a young chaplain at the Kings College, Cambridge, had just received that post after seeing the horrors of the First World War.  He wanted to make worship a more meaningful experience and spent his life updating and enriching the worship of the Church of England.  Lessons and Carols became a tradition in Cambridge and spread widely to other churches throughout the world, especially after the BBC began broadcasting the service in the 1930’s.

That service is broadcast, live from Cambridge on Christmas Eve by the BBC and is usually carried by public radio stations.  One year, I was surprised that one of the carols the choir sang was an anthem that in the country is more associated with Holy week than Christmas, John Stainer’s “God So Loved the World.”  In fact, that anthem is part of a longer work by Stainer, “The Crucifixion.”   It is an anthem that I’ve sung many times.

The text of the anthem is a quotation from John’s Gospel, a few chapters hence from what we read today, perhaps one of the best known quotations from the Bible. “God so loved the world that he gave the only Son, that whosever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

I think whoever put the service in Cambridge together that year wanted to emphasize something that we tend to ignore at Christmas:  this child just born, was born to die.  It is something often mentioned in Christmas carols and we think of Christmas as being so joyous, we often ignore this truth.  This child is born to die.

John begins his story of Jesus with this truth: the Word became Flesh.  There is a fancy word for that, incarnation.  You may recognize the Latin word, carne that came into Spanish, carne literally meat.  God became meat, just like you, just like me.  God became one of us.  God in Jesus experienced everything, every emotion, every pain, every joy that ever one of us knows. 

The glory of God can be revealed in the little place and in the everyday event.  Sometimes we look for God in the large places, the loud things, storms, wars, earthquakes, thunderous proclamations from pulpits.    But because of the incarnation, because God became flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, any and every dimension of life becomes an arena of God's extraordinary saving activity.  In the most mundane circumstances, from a space capsule orbiting the moon to you and I gathered here this morning, ordinary people like you and like me become the material for the Kingdom of God, the glory of the saints, the salvation of the world.

Amen.