Here is the Sermon from last Sunday, January 25th. It is a reflection on Mark 1:14-20
The disciples were everyday kind of people. They worked hard to support their family and it would seem by their ability to hire workers that they were OK at it. They were not degenerates or slobs, waiting for Jesus to come lift them out of the muck and set them on solid ground. In reality, the disciples were like you and me; normal folks with normal jobs and normal families. They were fisherman and it seems little else. So it strikes the reader a little strange that after hearing Jesus proclaim the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God and the time for repentance and ministry to begin he would make a b-line to the shore and pick out these 4 men to get things started.
Having friends that started businesses they paid a lot of attention as to who they brought in. They looked hard for the right people with the right skills, who would work for the right price, and when they had their team together they jumped right in and got to work. That is how normal business takes place as far as I know; you look at skill sets, ability to function at a high level doing a specific task, and when you have a functioning group together and the foundation is set then you might entertain the option of bringing in someone so green that you are going to have to teach them the ropes. But it would appear that Jesus wasn’t working off the same model. Jesus purposefully chose men who were obviously hard working but had no real skill set for the work ahead other than being whoever it was that Jesus saw them to be. John Calvin who is the main player in crafting many of the beliefs that we as a church uphold called these soon-to-be disciples “rough mechanics” which I think he took to mean operators or workers. For Calvin the most significant thing about these “rough mechanics” was that there was absolutely nothing about them that pointed towards any virtue or talent that they possessed that would allow them to “earn” the role of disciple. Everything for Calvin was rooted in the fact that we, like the disciples, can do nothing to make ourselves stand out to God other than be the person that God created us to be. We are all essentially “rough mechanics” in this respect. Yet no one really wants to be “bad” at the job that is set before them, yet we discover upon a closer look at the disciples that time after time they showed very little inherit talent to do their work.
Other than the immediate recognition of the authority and power of Jesus, the disciples struggled to grasp the work and teachings of Christ. Simon is found affirming faith in Christ but despite Jesus’ teachings he can’t accept a suffering messiah. Peter knows the goodness that comes with being in Christ but forgets that the task to is follow Jesus and when he can no longer be with Jesus he threatens to give up a lifetime of faith out a moment of fear. Perhaps most evident is that despite what Jesus had taught, what they had been in the very same room to hear and experience, despite everything that happened in three years of relationship, when the day finally came and Jesus would hang upon a cross Peter, Andrew, James and Simon where nowhere to be found yet God did not hold their failure of faith to be the last word.
God did not close the chapter of the disciples when they abandoned Jesus, for the same reason that God doesn’t write us off when we too fail to live up to the faith that God has in us, and for the disciples the faith that Jesus had in them. It is because we are not, despite what we might like or believe fishers of people. We are becoming fishers of people…right now we are still “rough mechanics.” The Christian faith is one of journey, it is one of becoming. The Christian faith is not like a job fair. You are not hired based on you ability to do the work right now and have the resume to back it up. The Christian faith is an investment, it is a risk, it is a life of becoming rather than just a moment of conversion. It is a being called into a relationship rather than yet another thing to accomplish or add to the busy schedule. For modern people like you and me who work so hard to get everything possible done for our families, our jobs and if possible ourselves it is hard to hear Jesus’ words without understanding the importance of becoming disciples. If we only hear Jesus say to the disciples, who Mark has responding immediately, that I will make you fish for people rather than I will make you become fishers of people, then we come face to face with the work rather than the relationship. “I am not so sure Jesus. I can give you the first and third Sunday’s of each month from 2 to 3, 3:30 tops.” Because if the disciples, who are to be our example in following Jesus, drop everything for a job that they couldn’t possibly perform well then we too must recognize there will be work rather than relationship, rather than journey, rather than growth. If there is no becoming then faith is a task and Jesus is just another guy sitting behind a booth at a job fair.
In closing, let me bring up a word that has been floating around in this message but hasn’t been named: Grace. It is by the grace of God that we as people go forward, live out our lives trying to live into the Call that God has given us, and it is grace that carries us. The reality is that grace and becoming are linked. We experience grace and love and mercy as we grow, as we become the disciples that God is calling us to be. Grace is our comfort as we fall flat, make mistakes, or say the wrong thing while we work towards living into the Kingdom that Christ begins to proclaim in our passage. It is surrounded by grace that we begin the process of becoming.
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