Sermons

Rewind

Rod Frohman                             Third Presbyterian Church
February 19, 2006                      Luke 5:1-11

I remember watching my brother, Pete, and my father fishing one summer at Mary’s Lake in the Rockies near Estes Park, Colorado. Pete had been fishing with worms and a bobber at one particular location for about an hour. He had caught nothing, zippo, da nadda. Then along came my dad with his fly rod, casting in a seemingly casual fashion with a 1, 2, 3 flicks of the line into the water, drag, and then real in. Endless repetition, poetry in motion. When he came near my brother’s chosen spot, he asked if he could fish through. “Sure”, replied Pete, “But there’s nothing here”. On came dad. 1, 2,… On the third flick a beautiful rainbow trout leaped just from below the water’s surface and hit the fly in midair. My brother stood there, mouth agape, watching my father reel in the miraculous catch.

When old solutions no longer work, then something new must be tried.

Fishing is kind of like golf; you never offer advice unless it’s asked for. In the Gospel lesson this morning Jesus breaks all the rules. He gives unsolicited advice. And I imagine that anybody in that situation would mutter as Peter may have muttered, “What does he mean, throw the nets into the deep! What difference does it make? I have been doing this all night! Who does he think he is anyway? He’s a carpenter! I’m the fisherman! What does he know about fishing? Besides, he’s a preacher now and preachers always think they’re experts in everything. Why doesn’t he let me fish the way I know how? It’s not as if I started fishing yesterday!”

In his marvelous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn suggests an idea. “Failure of existing rules are the prelude for the search for new ones.” (University of Chicago, 1968, p. 68) In the 16th century, physicist Nicholas Copernicus, contemporary with both Luther and Calvin, looked at the planets and stars and realized that the change of their position, relative to the earth, could not be explained by a stationary Earth. Nor could the change of the seasons, be explained only by the movement of the sun. The earth itself had to do some moving. “So in his new system, Copernicus placed the Sun at the center of solar system and ascribed three motions to the Earth: a daily spin on its axis, an annual orbit around the Sun and an annual and gyration of the Earth’s axis of spin to account for the precision of the equinoxes.” (Stephen Finley Mason, History of the Sciences, Collier, 1968, page 127-128)

When old solutions no longer work, then something new must be tried.

The story of the miraculous catch of fish is about new methods, but is much more than that. Because it is followed with that classic phrase, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be fishing for people.” This challenge is not without significant complications. First, Jesus is calling folks to follow him who are otherwise busy with their lives. Further, the fishermen-disciples called by Jesus were not poor. They were hard working folks who contributed to the economy of the decapolis, the ten towns around the edge of the Sea of Galilee. It was an ideal place in which to make a living. The would-be disciples are not people greatly anxious about what they're going to do with the rest of their lives. It was good and worthwhile to be part of the agricultural business that sustained the life of a beautiful part of ancient Palestine.

To these busy people came the inconvenient summons, “Follow me and I will have you fishing for people.”

We of course have heard the story dozens of times, how this band of fishing brothers, joined with a tax collector, an assassin, a couple of do-gooders, did in fact, leave family and business behind and followed Jesus. That following got them into a significant degree of difficulty, which for some ended up okay, but for Peter, the protagonist in our story, didn’t end up very well at all because, as tradition suggests, he ended up on a cross of his own and was crucified upside down.

When it really comes down to it how many of us are really willing to cast our nets out into the deep, when it is so much easier to stay in the routine of our lives?

But there are times when a routine, comfortable as it may be, doesn’t work any more. Like Copernicus , we see anomalies, exceptions, contradictions. Perhaps in our families there are growing patterns of behavior that were not discernable just a few months ago. Someone is more isolated, someone is more independent… On the job, sales are drying up in your sector that used to be very strong… In medical research a pattern begins to be observable that women of color are being treated differently than white women. In agriculture it has been recently noticed that the Ogallala Aquifer, a source of water underlying five western states which has nourished the American corn belt for 100 years, is going dry in the middle of Kansas. (http://www.saveourwatersupply.org/ogallala/)

When old solutions no longer work, then something new must be tried.

We may have been struggling with our work, our families, our lives for a long time without any new results. Then along comes someone who points out the anomaly and suggests that we launch out into the deep and let the shorelines go. We resist, we grumble, but we give it a try. We are afraid. Like Isaiah of old, we see ourselves as ill equipped, unworthy. The change required is foundational, structural. The anomalies exist, the data are leading us to different conclusions. The new way is simultaneously attractive, yet repelling---mysterious. Fear and excitement are combined.

In Selma, Alabama in 1965 the civil rights movement was facing considerable opposition. The optimism of the 1963 March on Washington was replaced by billy clubs, police dogs, and fire hoses. Speaking autobiographically to a gathered crowd Martin Luther King. Jr. spoke not to his and others’ fears but to the deep mystery that was calling him, as a Baptist preacher:

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. He may go on and live until he's 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. (http://www.etsu.edu/cas/history/docs/mlkselma.htm)

If you follow me, I will have you catching people—divers into the deep sea of humanity.

In 1982 during the heart of the struggle over apartheid in South Africa, The Dutch Reformed Mission Church, the so-called “colored church” then led by Allen Boesak, declared that apartheid constituted “status confessionis,” a situation so imperiled that the heart of the Gospel itself was at risk. So they drafted a document that in 1986 became the Belhar Confession. Many who signed this document received long-term jail sentences including Russell Botman, who spoke just two weeks ago at Union seminary in Richmond, Virginia. The Belhar Confession is now becoming a model for Presbyterians in the United States to study the nature of our unity and the nature of our diversity as we deal with issues of sexuality and ordination. (The Presbyterian Outlook, February 13, 2006, p. 3)

This is not unlike another “status confessionis” situation in Germany in 1934. In the face the growing threat of Nazism, a minority of German Christians created the Barman Declaration, which proclaims Christ as Lord of every area of life, not the Fuehrer. As we are well aware many Christians, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, paid with their lives for signing the declaration.

If you follow me, I will have you catching people—divers into the deep sea of humanity.

At its easiest point, the call of Christ is inconvenient. At its most difficult point, it is costly. Indeed it was Bonhoeffer who said, “When Christ calls a man [person] he bids him [that person] to come and die.” No wonder his most famous book was called, The Cost of Discipleship. (MacMillan, 1963, p. 99)

There is an anomaly that has been gnawing on me for years which just this past month has finally been clearly diagnosed, thanks to a new friend, Eric Mount, a Presbyterian ethics professor at Centre College in Danville, KY. I fully realize that this diagnosis bites the hand that feeds me, which is what makes it most difficult for me to articulate. Indeed I fear the consequences of this diagnosis. (Note: Eric Mount is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Centre College, where he has taught since 1966. He holds the Nelson D. and Mary McDowell Rodes Professorship. He retired from the active faculty in June, 2002.)

Mount says, in America, “What we are dealing with is a crisis of the triumph of individualism.” (Eric Mount, Covenant Community and the Common Good: An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Pilgrim Press, 1999, p. 7) There are a number of symptoms to which this general diagnosis speaks. Many of us have noticed them.

“Individual pursuit of self-interest still seems largely unchallenged, and even resurgent, as the driving force of morality and much of our society. Instant individual gratification, [the gospel] individual self help, and individual success have lost none of their luster as American preoccupations” (Ibid. p. 3)

Further, our families seem diminished, if not disappeared. We don’t eat together we don’t stay together, we can’t find time for each other, the supper table has been superseded by the TV, the microwave, the computer, and fast food to go” (Ibid. p. 4) and the ultimate private tool, the PDA, personal digital assistant. (Note: At this precise moment in the delivery of this sermon a cell phone rang in the sanctuary.)

Further, and less noticeable, the civic language of “deep symbols” (Edward Farley) of reciprocity, mutual obligation, responsibility, fraternity, solidarity and love and have been replaced with the language of competing interests, preferences , polls and market trends. (Ibid. p,4-5)

Perhaps least noticed is the triumph of “utilitarian” individualism in the global market is the logical conclusion of what classical liberals have understood to be the “utility, or greatest total economic benefit that results from free trade in the global market.” (Ibid. p. 3) But free trade for whom, economic benefit for whom? The world simply has too many people and too few resources to continue the current patterns of free trade driven consumption.

Trying to be cryptic, Tomas L Friedman describes this brave new world as “flat” and “on steroids.” (The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century, Farrar, NY, 2005, p. 172) Perhaps. But what he is really describing is a world infected with the pandemic of “affluenza,” a world in which and the gap between the rich and poor is growing. And not just between North America and South America, but here at home. David Rusk, in his book, Inside Game, Outside Game, (Washington DC, 1999, Brookings, p. 352) an analysis of 58 metropolitan areas in the USA has documented that in 1970, (Remember 1964 when Rochester irrupted in riots?) there were no census tracts which could be classified as “high poverty” areas—that is 40% of the residents living below the poverty line. Now there are 16 such census tracts.

Old solutions will wear out and something new must be tried. It is clear that the idea of individualism as political and economic doctrine as well as a foundation for ethics is exhausted. So where should we cast our nets now? What kinds of truth claims are allowable, and even thinkable in this context?

It is time to become global disciples, to counter America's first language of radical individualism with the language of covenant, community and common good. The idea is to frame our lives using these normative expressions of the Christian tradition so that the saints are equipped to think and act responsibly in a global society.” (“What We Agreed To Do”, E-mail from Eric Mount to RPF, January 26 2006)

“Covenant” is predominantly a Hebraic metaphor that locates the individual in a community of identity, purpose and promise, even obligation to God and neighbor. It distinguishable from the individualism of Greek thought in the West which has made the self atomistic, isolated and incidental to the whole. In Christian ethics covenant has figured prominently in Protestant circles, especially the Reformed tradition including Calvin and Knox. (Mount, p. 1)

The “common good” limits individual pursuit of private happiness by setting the self in a corporate body whose well-being takes precedence over that of any single member. The common good has its roots in Plato and Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas and through modern Papal encyclicals. Thus it is primarily a Catholic legacy. Both covenant and common good traditions resist the extremes and omissions of Western individualism. Both endorse the dignity and worth of the individual yet call for a balance between individual and community. (Ibid.)

Those who begin with the community call themselves “communitarians” because they oppose elevating the individual over the good of the community. (Ibid. p. 2) There are varieties of these with a long history in America. Some are religious like the Mennonites and Quakers. Some are secular like John Dewey. Martin Luther King, Jr. is its most famous supporter with his frequent reference to the “beloved community.”

One can see that this is not exactly a debate between worm and fly-fishing on a mountain lake, but it is deep-sea fishing. If we apply covenant, community and the common good to our lives then we have a whole new level of discussion about families, jobs and government. In the global scene, this standard will compel us to ask, “Are our economic agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) harbingers of true global community or hazards to the common good? Is the world flat for Africa, or just for the World Bank?” Can there be a universal covenant and common good?” (Ibid. p. 6)

Ultimately, all of this is about the cost of being a disciple of Jesus.

Have you ever noticed the stained glass window in the balcony over East Avenue? Christ is carrying the cross and with one arm as he is beckoning and pointing ahead, motioning others to follow him. Christ is calling us to follow him in the way of the cross. It is a very beautiful window and yet very, very disturbing.