Luke 5.1-11 4 February 2007
“HOW JESUS GETS A HOLD OF US”
Do you know the old hymn we sing, “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.” It re-minds me of my grandma, so I like it. But to be honest, it is a little deceptive. And this is why. “Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me; patient and loving he’s watching and waiting, watching for you and for me. Come home…” It’s a sweet hymn, yes. And Jesus showed great tenderness and com-passion, yes. But if all we had were this hymn in gauging the tenor of Jesus call, we might not recognize how he speaks to us and how he would have us respond. We might not recognize the world we live in and how he cut through that world. For Jesus’ purpose was far more ambitious than being sweet, soft, and pleasant.
Our annual meeting is sneaking up on us, the last Saturday of this month, at 1:30 pm. It is a time when we thank outgoing leaders for answering God’s call and when we might help prepare incoming leaders for what is to be expected of them. So today we do well to pause over the call of our Lord as he calls us to this table.
The problem with “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” is that Jesus hardly carried an ounce of sentimentality around with him. And we are surrounded by a culture of sentimentality that resolves all manner of human struggle and despair in a half-hour situation comedy with a happy ending that leaves everyone smiling. We live in a culture of sentimentality that teaches we must avoid struggle and that no one should ever have to suffer, not even for what we believe in most. Of course, that is not the way this world is and we know that. In the real world we know, greatness demands sacrifice without exception. But we are ever exposed to such sentimentality because this is how popular culture sells its products. Appropriate to Luke’s theme of fisherman, one of my favorite theologians claimed that sentimentality should be taken like salmon. In small amounts, it is delicious. But eaten daily—like some did in his native Denmark—we grow sickly and weak.
As Jesus called two boats of fisherman at the lake of Gennesaret, notice how he did so. He wasn’t interested in finding volunteers. No, Jesus enlisted disciples. Of course, volunteers are lovely. They do so much good in today’s society. But being a volunteer is a much more casual status than what Jesus was carving out.
I mean, if a volunteer, gets his or her nose out of joint at the terms of the call, he or she walks and finds somewhere else to volunteer. When Jesus calls the likes of Peter, James and John, he doesn’t say, “Ahem. Would any of you take on this job?” No, Jesus speaks in the imperative mood to an unlikely cast who is not straining forward saying, “Pick me, pick me, Jesus!” His message is, “Follow me.”
Follow me to the ends of the earth. Follow me to the end of your life. No turning back. No half-measures. No third way to the choices of good and evil. No other gods before me. Volunteers pretty much do what they like and are interested in. Disciples do as God says, trusting God’s ideas about what we are supposed to be doing more than we trust human ideas about what we should do. What is the difference between volunteers and disciples? It is Jesus saying, “You did not choose me, but I choose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide.” You just don’t speak to volunteers like that.
That leads us to the second point on Jesus’ calling his own. He refuses to mini-mize or scale back the commitment he demands in his invitation. Jesus refuses not because he is a cruel taskmaster, but because he refuses to deceive people into believing anything less than God will expect anything and everything of us.
Luke (9.57) records a man volunteering to Jesus. “I will follow you wherever you go,” he extravagantly promises. But Jesus has seen the type before. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests,“ he wryly responds. “But the Son of man has no where to lay his head.” In other words, it sounds nice, buddy, but I’m not convinced you are in it for the duration. Two verses later, another man said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Again, Jesus is unimpressed. “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Can you hear how very little sentimentality there is in that?
One observer commented how Jesus broke the heart of many a first century wife and mother. Whatever hope for earthly security and stability they had went out the door with the new life of those venturesome disciples after that miraculous catch of fish. Jesus is not calling them home, as the hymn has it. He is calling them out of their homes. Or, more accurately, he is calling them to a new non-geographic home. So much for “Focus on the Family”; more like “God’s Reign or Bust!” So the primary unit of the reign Jesus announced was not the biological family. Rather it is the water out of this font and the blood represented upon this table. Jesus terms were complete and unconditional commitment or don’t bother.
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling? No, Jesus calls me like seminary professors who didn’t care one whit how hard I had worked on my paper, I had to do better. Jesus calls me like my physical therapists after episodes of lower back pain; it does not matter if this causes you discomfort, you need to repeat these practices. He calls like the hockey coach launching practice with 20 minutes of wind sprints.
And here’s the kicker: Jesus prefers commitment much more than a pretty face, a fat wallet, or a glistening resume. Jesus is not so impressed by our natural abilities, winsome appearance, multi-faceted talents or our lifetime achievements. If he were so impressed by these, he wouldn’t have approached the likes of the men on those two boats. Jesus is not so impressed by our protestations that we need to do more research first, we need to be more fully retired to have the time, or we need to further pad our nest egg before we are ready to answer. If he were impressed by these, he would have doubled back to pick up and include those with their variety of domestic excuses for not responding when God needed them
It’s not that Jesus was overbearing, imperious, or haughty. He was none of these things. But he received a mammoth mission from on high. And it was not for the faint of heart. The cause was finally all that mattered. It was more, and this is the third point, that Jesus had bigger fish to fry than the fish they were already catching. And holy mackerel, there was not one red herring among them. What was Jesus’ lofty cause? God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, Paul stated. Talk about picking up the check for the whole table at that lobster dinner.
Jesus was unabashed about pursuing his mission because it could only happen if sought on God’s terms rather than on human terms. Jesus did the things the way he did them because there was no other way. Nothing was more important.
But notice something. Even before Jesus confronted the fisherman with his stag-gering claim on their lives with his call to discipleship, he did something for them. He rescued them from their workaday futility and despair at their best efforts. He gave them a glimpse of the matchless abundance that God has in store for them. After all, they had spent the entire night fishing, and not caught the first fish. Not only had they worked themselves bone tired, they had nothing to show for it. Is that the best I can expect from life? they asked. But they trusted Jesus enough to cast one more time. And the rest is history, as they say. As they saw that mass of fish, enough to feed the whole village and more, they had a foretaste of the massive and miraculous abundance that God wanted to give them and the world.
Of course, the nets were so full it almost sank the boat, so full they nearly broke their backs, so full and they had to leave it behind for others. All right, it was abundance, but unsentimental abundance, the same sacrificial abundance Jesus would win for them later, the same costly abundance we taste at this table. Amen.
